Comey: ‘No Information’ To Back Trump’s Claim Obama Wiretapped Him
by Ken Dilanian

..

The FBI is investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with a covert Russian campaign to interfere with the U.S. presidential election, FBI Director James Comey told Congress Monday, an explosive disclosure that could shadow the Trump presidency.

In his opening statement at a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee, Comey said the investigation was being undertaken “as part of our counterintelligence mission,” and that he could not disclose any details about it. Normally, he said, the FBI doesn’t confirm or deny investigations, but it can make exceptions in cases of major public interest.

Later in the hearing, Comey said he “has no information that supports” Trump’s allegation that President Obama ordered surveillance of his communications in Trump Tower during the campaign.

It was Mark Levin who argued (a bad argument and a non sequitor really) that Obama must have ordered it, and very questionably extrapolated from what was leaked that the FISA warrant applied to Trump Tower.

(There was a leak about a server used for data, and a further leak later that the server had been shut down before the FISA warrant was approved on October 15.)

British intelligence, which never issues statements, issued a statement denying it, and also got applogy from NSA Adviser McMaster – then later Donald trump alluded to it as a possibility, or maybe a probability, in his press conference with Angela Merkel.

When trumo was asked about this at the press conference he said, words something like: “I didn’t say that, a very talented commentator on Fox News said it, go ask Fox News, don’t ask me about this.”

Fox News then said it had no informaiton (other than that Andrew Napolitano claimed to have 3 sources that is) – and Larry C. Johnson (best known for wrongly reporting in 2008 that Michelle Obama had used the word “Whitey” on videotape) called the New York Times and said Napolitano called him and told to call the New York Times.

And he told the New York Times that he was one of Napolitano’s sources, or maybe the only source, although he didn’t speak to Napolitano before the broadcast, but Napolitano heard about what he was saying through a third person.

Johnson said he had sources (that means at least 2) in the American intelligence community.

And we have no idea who these people were or why they said it. They could have been working for Vladimir Putins spy agency. (Putin may be interested in spreading susoicion between the U.S> government and the UK.)

I would expect any individuals under surveillance may have been in the Trump location(s) on several occasions when under surveillance.

If the actual primary target was an American, it would have been interceotong telephone calls, eavesdroppoing on a cell phone, or possibly an email account, not physical surveillance. Anyway Donald Trump himself was never a target according to Comey.

So when will Adam Schiff and the other grasping at straws Democrats flatly state there is no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians? Schiff is the ranking Dim on the same committee as Nunes.

But he’s just stated there’s an active investigation of Trump-Russian ties, Sammy.

That’s a general investigation. It could very mean, and probably does, that some persons associated with Trump may have had their conversations monitored, or at any rate their conversations with Russians overheard – normally even when foreign officials or suspected agents are spied on, the names of the Americans they speak to are not supposed to be recorded or reported further up the line.

And you could have had bank accounts monitored, maybe all the bank transactions of a business, especially one based abroad, to see if anybody got any money, or e-mails perhaps looked at, at least e-mails going to or coming from certain specified individuals. Seeing if anybody got paid off would have been a big, big, part of this thing. And then the question is why they got it.

i.e. was this legitimate or for some hidden, improper reason? And if it was a disguised payment did the person being paid understand what was going on??

Rush Limbagh wants to know who initiated this investigation, and if there are any OPbama holdovers, or Obama embeds, involved.

I note that Comey did not say that it’s only the Trump campaign that’s being looked at.

So when will Adam Schiff and the other grasping at straws Democrats flatly state there is no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians? Schiff is the ranking Dim on the same committee as Nunes.

It’s been commented that Schiff over the weekend seemed to be less partisan, and more sober than usual for him.

Rush Limbaugh thinks this meme of Trump colluding with Russia may have gone further than anyone originally intended and now some political careers could be in trouble if this doesn’t pan out.

Limbaugh also says (and has said before) that there’s nothing that Russia affected either the casting or the counting of the votes, and if they didn’t there’s nothing to it.

He also thought the #NeverTrumpers were ecstatic about the confirmation of this investigation (although he says, he’s always assumed there is an investigation.)

Its like the ridiculous ‘October surprise’ allegation first circulated by Barbara honegger, than bani sadr took up the mantle, having slandered the shah and bringing khomeini to power wasnt enough, Gary sick then joined the fray.

Schiff wasn’t on Face the Nation yesterday – he was on Meet the Press. That he was less partidan s was something I heard someone say on some broadcast. It probably means there were some things he didn’t say.

Hee did claim that we had already gottne to the bottom of it. But you want to know about the lleaks.

I remember Adam Schiff for saying on Face the Nation one time (October 25, 2015) that Hillary Clinton was right not to contradict the story about there being a spontaneous attack in Benghazi and she would have bene judtly criticized had she done so.

….But it was the — the considered judgment, the assessment of the intelligence experts for that week until we got those tapes, that there had been a protest. And that turned out to be wrong.

But to criticize Secretary Clinton for relying on the best of intelligence that we had at the time seemed to be wholly inappropriate. Had she had spoken, frankly, in contradiction of what our intelligence agencies were telling her, that might be something to criticize.

Hillary Clinton, and the entire State Department, of course knew first hand taht there had been no protest that anyone knew about, and that there had been a surprise attack, because Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith, were in communication with the State Department.

Well, on the issue of collusion he’ll probably be the most limited in what he can share, but there’s a lot he can tell us about the Russian motivations for their intervention in our election, how the Russians operate in Europe, what techniques they use and what we should be on the lookout for in our investigation in Europe and other places we’ve seen them use blackmail, use compromise, use the natives of those foreign countries that they’re intervening in, how they use paid social media trolls, so the full range of Russian intervention and what that looks like. So I think fleshing out why this ought to matter to Americans. I think people need to understand we are in a global war of ideas. It’s not communism vs. capitalism, but it is authoritarianism vs. democracy and Putin is very much at the vanguard of that autocratic movement and that ought to concern all of us.

This is actually untrue. Putin is not so much promoting authoritarianism, as he is fear of refugees and opposition to immigration. Interesting that Schiff won’t go there.

Democrats always have to accuse their opponents of being guilty of somrthing other than the truth; of being guilty of something everybody opposes and not something that some substanial part of the population supports.

Putin is not attacking democracy (or elections) at all. He’s trying to raise suspicion of foreigners in Europe, particularly refugees, and really particularly Syrian </b? refugees. (and Donald Trump went along with that)

Putin is prootongg propaganda that says they commit crimes and support terrorism, and in so doing, spreading lies about particular crimes, and also that they do it simply because they are Moslems, not a particular variety of Moslem or a radicalized Moslem anything like that.

And that's it's newly arrived people who cause all the trouble, rather than people, or children of people who arrived many years ago, as is indeed the case. If people realized that they'd know the problem stemmed from their criminal justice policies and their welfare state. Cutting off immigration wouldn't put a stop to that.

22. No, I don’t think the Russians were involved in the campaign of 1980.

They might not have liked Carter too much also because he put some limited snactions on them. The Olympics and the grain sale, and the stupid gesture of reviving draft registration he was stating to support the military opposition to them in Afghanistan.

But could they think that Reagan would be better for them?

Mostly they probably didn’t think they could affect things very much and anyway Carter was favored to win. And anyway Brezhnev always thought incumbents are going to win when they are up for re-election. They thought Nixon was going to last in 1974.

The Soviet Union had actually tried to remove the tyrant – they got rid of the tyrant they imposed and then suddenly everybody noticed.

They did favor Kennedy over Nixon in 1960, though. Their main way of affecting things was to make the danger of nuclear war look a little bigger.

Now, Iran was tremendously against Carter untl it finally hit them that the alternative was Reagan. So they made the best deal for releasing the hostages that they could.

Yes, it was mtp, I get them mixed up, they are so similar in coverage and the like. As you can see, they will push collusion or other lies for as long as they can with no pushback to speak of from their Dem operatives with bylines buddies.

In 1980-81 the best deal for Iran was getting the most amount of money (the money came from frozen assets) for the hositages.

Khomeini still didn’t want Carter to get the credit or he thought Carter would raise the offer the later it got, so he negotiated to the last day and released them so they would become free after Carter was not longer president and he couldn’t greet them.

Carter didn’t release all the frozen assets – Obama gave them the rest, with interest. Kerryclaimed it was a good deal becase Iran accepted a lower rate of interest than they were claiming.

The real reason was to prevent Iran from backing out of the nuclear deal. Iran had been complaining that theer were still defacto ssanctions and Iran wasn’t getting the money it expected. I – it was not ransom, but Obama wouldn’t do it unless he also got the imprisoned people – at least the ones Iran admitted holding.

“Doctor. You have testified that the following symptoms exist in Lieutenant-Commander Queeg’s behavior. Rigidity of personality, feelings of persecution, unreasonable suspicion, a mania for perfection, and a neurotic certainty that he is always in the right. Doctor isn’t there one psychiatric term for this illness?” – Barney Greenwald [Jose Ferrer] ‘The Caine Mutiny’ 1954

What we have is a May 14, 1983 memorandum by Victor Chebrikov, head of the KGB, addressed to Yuri Andropov, former head of the KGB, now the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – in charge of the whole Societ Union that is. He had probably been running things during the last months of Leonid Breznev’s life, but was soon to become disabled himself long before he died in February, 1984.

This document was found in the archives that Boris Yeltsin let some people look at in 1991. Tim Sebastian of the London Times was one of them. I think they were not supposed to copy anythnng, but they didn’t know about high tech small scanners in Russia. The memorandum itself is not aforgery.

I don’t what Tunney has to say about all this. He is still alive. Kennedy’s office never issued a denial, according to Paul Kengor who included ir in his 2006 book The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.

The memorandum is a summary of a message that former California Senator John Tunney alledgedly attempted to get through to the top leadership of the USSR on the 9th and the 10th of May, 1983.

If it is true that former (one term, 1970 to 1976 elections) California Senator John Tunney ) indeed said what is in there, and that he was also acting for Kennedy, Kennedy tried to sell them something but they wouldn’t buy.

The Soviet Union at that time was running a nuclear freeze campaign. They may have had hopes of defeating Reagan in 1984. Kennedy proposed to let him take charge of the propaganda. He would do it so much better. He would tell them what to say, and he could also arrange for interviews of andropov on american television.

Kennedy did not offer anything in return except to say he is very troubled by the current state of Soviet-American relations and that he planned to run for president in 1988, although theer was a possibility the Democrats might turn to him in 1984.

But the Soviets were not interested in something where they would dance to Kennedy’s tune nor were they looking ahead so far as the 1988 election maybe.

We were very slow in finding out about this. The first revelation of this was after the fall of the Soviet Union, but it didn’t get noticed. A story was published in the London Times in 1992, bit that was it. It got repeated in a 2006 book, which also didn;’t get noticed. Then Forbes magazine published a story in its 8/28/2009 issue and that had legs.

Hell yes Obama tapped Trump, just like he tapped anyone he feared or who threatened to expose his totalitarian criminal and treacherous assault on patriotic citizens, free speach, religious freedom, and the other rights guaranteed to Americans by the US Constitution.

Barack Obama is a low down, belly crawling, dirty, rotten, commie rat. And he deserves to be exposed for the filthy two-faced cockroach he has so obviously and undeniably proved himself to be. He is an enemy of the American people, and a traitor to the nation.

Obama fully deserves to face the overwhelming consequences of his vicious betrayal of nearly every value generations of Americans have honored and have defended with their lives.

No one talks about why Putin hates Clinton. It’s the same reason for the encroachment into Eastern Ukraine. It’s because of what happened against Milosevic and the Serbs. Putin realizes that Clinton and al qaeda are attached at the hip.

We pretend that the Soviets were in Afghanistan trying to add another domino to global communism. That’s not why at all.

I remember reading… perhaps in a David Horowitz book (or maybe Hitchens?)… about the financial crap Bill Clinton pulled in Russia in the early 90s when Yeltsin was at the helm. It was about as outrageous and egregious as anything I’ve ever read being committed against another nation in peacetime.

We now learn that the FBI investigation started in July. That would be about the time Christopher steele made his first report, and Fusion GPS is said to have tried to get an investigation started, maybe with the help of Harry Reid.

On the other hand it may have come out of another investigation, into Manafort.

It is also important to get the chronology right. Russia started leaking only after their penetration of the DNC was discovered and stopped. (they still had the ongoing penetration of Panetta’s Gmail account, but didn’t leak anything from that until about two months after that was stoppped, in August.)

There’s little reason for Russia to have co-ordinated the hacking with anyone – do they need more ways for their spying to get discovered?

But I can see Russia trying to determine what kind of information would be most damaging to an American politician. But this would and could be done by asking reporters, as Guccifer 2.0 in fact did.

Dozens of newspapers, television stations, bloggers and radio stations around the United States — including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal — pursued reporting based on the hacked material, significantly increasing the effects of the cyberattack. In some cases, Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks took requests from reporters, releasing documents to them directly.

What need is there to ask anybody associated with Donald Trump, and wouldn’t be the reporters be the real experts as to what was damaging??

Now sometimes Guccifer 2.0 didn’t have what reprters were looking for but he (or they) still attempted to fill the order:

———–
* As in me, personally and directly. I might have hinted it or OKed someone else’s attempt.
** strictly speaking it would be a court’s order
*** Everything is recorded always. We only ask for permission to paw through the recordings.
**** We might have just been listening to other people working for his campaign. Anything we heard about the candidate or campaign itself would have been accidental.

Freddie’s dead
That’s what he said
Let the man dig teh hole
Said he could play a role
But he sold the reverse
And he left in a hearse
Everybody they told him
Run for prez and they sold him
Another effed up plan
Soon he was rippin’ off an old man
A terrible blow
But that’s how it goes
And he’s pushin’ up daisies now
If you want to be a senator, wow
Remember Freddie’s dead
We all watched him in movies
Back when Alec B was groovy
He could deal with Baldwin’s bad moods
But the lymphoma thing was pretty rude
Ain’t nothing said
‘Cause Freddie’s dead

So… 97% of DOJ political donations go to Democrats. And Comey can talk about an ongoing investigation of Russians and the Trump campaign, but can’t (or won’t) talk about an investigation of leakers who would face felonies and penalties of up to 10 years in prison.

They really do seem to be trying to have it both ways: Trump is wrong, he wasn’t wiretapped, but no, he or his campaign or his people, weren’t cleared of collaboration with Russia either, and he can’t Ruussia didn’t effect the election. . Comey can say nothing about practically anything – except maybe that Trump is wrong.

And that someone or something is still under active investigation. Comey argues don’t read anything into his refusal to comment.

He can’t even say whether any leaks of actual facts took place, although there he tried to hint that there is an investigation because there alqways would be. (to say there is an investigation would mean there were factual leaks)

Full disclosure Sammy. My tooth still hurts, but the swelling went down.

I’m calling the folic acid a partial success.

it is supposed to be good for the gums.

My experience is it also gets rid of pain (because it’s healing) but maybe it’s a really big problem. I always started it pretty early. I don’t know if this has gone on for days before you took the folic acid. I think maybe if you keep it up, and perhaps add pineapple, and good food, the pain will go away too. The tooth may fall out, but the pain should go away. There’s probably some nerve damage.

Heh… I read the LAT story on that. It’s funny that you’ll see major news people on the alphabet channels make comment after comment, later to be proven as not factual and never get called on it. And here’s Fox News so aghast at what Napolitano had said they yank him off the air. Just goes to prove liberals don’t shame or embarrass easy.

And look at the Fareed Z sh*tshow on CNN over the weekend. Even more proof.

Fox News Pulls Judge Andrew Napolitano off the air indefinitely for his comments on Britiss ties to Trump wiretapping

They have? I guess Judge Napolitano wasn’t able to satisfactorily explain himself. Donald Trump cost him the job, by pointing the finger at him.

It was actually an extraordinary thing for Napolitano even to pass the buck to Larry Johnson, who now, having his own reputation to uphold, claims that Napolitano didn’t quite get what he had to say right.

He says that what he posted in an online discussion board didn’t mean that the British were doing any wiretapping or whatever (Johnson used the term “information operation”) themselves.

And furthermore he didn’t say it was done at the direction of Barack Obama, but rather that the British through GHCQ were passing information back-channel with the full knowledge of people like John Brennan and Jim Clapper.

And he doesn’t know who Napolitano’s other two sources might have been, (unless they’re his own two sources) and he didn’t talk to Napolitano, but rather one of the people on the discussion board passed on what he said to the judge. And he’ll let us think Napolitano got a distorted version of what he, Johnson, wrote.

Now what Johnnson actually said is probably also not true. And the whole thing was probably a Russian ploy to force details of the investigation out into the open.

In the interview on Friday, Mr. Johnson acknowledged his notoriety, but said that his knowledge of surveillance of Mr. Trump came from sources in the American intelligence community. Mr. Napolitano, he said, heard about his information through an intermediary.

Larry C. Johnson was apparently one of Napolitano sources for the claim. He’s a former intelligence officer and State Department counterterrorism official who joins me now from Washington.

Larry, thanks for being here.

LARRY JOHNSON, FORMER INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: Hi, Brian. Hey, let’s be clear about one thing. I didn’t call “The New York Times”. “The New York Times” called me, to be precise. [On re-reading the NYT story, while it sounds like Johnson called the New York Times, it is consistent with the New York Times placing the call, too. SF]

[The New York Times indicates that the call did not come asa surprise to Johnson, but here he wants it to be a surprise, so he can claim they did not collude. Which means they did, and at forst Johnson tried to protect Napolitano. – SF]

STELTER: OK. And you were one of Napolitano sources for the story?

JOHNSON: Well, not knowingly. I’m part of a discussion group with veterans, intelligence professionals for sanity. When you put all the group in one room, you have a complete ideological spectrum from right to left. But we all agree on one thing, that the intelligence operations of this country need to be accountable to the law and need to perform in a way that serves the public and doesn’t disserve the public.

So, we’ve been writing. We’ve been critical of President Bush. We’ve been critical of President Obama. I’m sure we’ll be critical of President Trump.

So, you know, we’re a bipartisan — we have a bipartisan point of view.

STELTER: And you’re saying that because some folks have said, oh, you’re a right winger who is on the fringe who is making these claims? Is that’s why you’re specifying?

JOHNSON: Well, I can show you the transcript from Rush Limbaugh in 2007 where he accused me of being the Democrats spokesman. I gave a Democrat — [Johnspn has all this material ready at hand. I get the feeling we may not know who he’s really working for, but he’s not working for himself, although maybe he can change clients. SF]

STELTER: He’s said a lot of nutty things about me too. So, I hear what you’re saying.

JOHNSON: Yes.

STELTER: Let me ask you about this claim.

So, my sense is that on Monday, Napolitano says this on TV, says he has intel sources who believe this is true. You’re saying you were one of those sources but you didn’t know that Napolitano was going to use you like that?

JOHNSON: Yes. Well, apparently what happened is I communicated — when Donald Trump tweeted what he did on Saturday, two weeks ago. The next day I was interviewed on Russia Today.

[That’s enough maybe. Putin probably was behind this GCHQ story, with the goal of creating enough controversy so as to force detauls of the investigation into Russian hacking out into the open. SF]

Now, I had known about the fact that the British through GHCQ were passing information back channel. This was not done at the direction of Barack Obama. Let’s be clear about that. But it was being done with the full knowledge of people like John Brennan and Jim Clapper.

And I had been told this about two different people that I know within the intelligence community, you know, in January. They were very concerned about this because they saw it as an unfair meddling in politics, but it was a way to get around the issue of American intelligence agencies not collecting.

STELTER: To be clear, you had this second hand. So, you didn’t get this information directly. You’re hearing it from others?

JOHNSON: I’m hearing it from people who are in a position to know. That’s correct.

So, I posted that on the discussion board and apparently, one of the individuals there shared that with the judge. I don’t know what his other sources are. All I know is what I know. I had known about this before it came out.

I think sort of — here’s the irony of this, Brian. You know, one of the main claims that came out of the report that was issued in January — early January claiming, oh, Russia was meddling in the election and one of the main vehicles was Russia Today. I spoke on Russia Today two weeks ago. This thing didn’t surface until Judge Napolitano brought it out.

Now, if Russia Today was so influential —

STELTER: You’re saying Russia Today is not that influential? [the online transcript does not capitalize the word “today” I corrected that. He’s not talking about Russia, the country, but Russia Today, the network. Which is no longer officially called Russia Today but RT. – SF]

JOHNSON: I’m telling you that’s the truth. I mean, who watches it? [But RT is not intended to be an original source for most people, but a source for sources – the olldest link in the chain. SF]

The fact that I spoke about it two weeks ago and it didn’t even surface — it wasn’t even a blip anywhere in the U.S. news media. And so, I guarantee, if people like yourself who were very informed, very up to speed on things, don’t pick up on something like that, you expect a coal miner in Pennsylvania, an auto worker in Michigan, that they’re going to be on top of Russia Today? Excuse me, you can’t even get here on Verizon Fios in the D.C. area.

STELTER: Well, I can get it on Spectrum here in New York. But let me ask you about Russia Today.

Why is it appropriate for any American to appear on a Kremlin propaganda network?

JOHNSON: Well, it’s not a Kremlin propaganda network. [If he was intentionally appearing – and probably being paid – on a Kremlin propaganda network, he would deny that, and the fact that he denies it is further circumstantial evidence taht Vladimir Putin is behind this GCHQ story. SF]

You know what the fundamental difference I found appearing on Russia Today as opposed to CNN and CNN, and on MSNBC, and on FOX — remember, I was fired from FOX or my contract was not renewed in 2003 because I had the audacity to go on the “Hannity and Coombs Show” in November 2002 and I say, going into Iraq would be diversion on the war in terror. I was told subsequently that Roger Ailes didn’t like that, wanted me off air. [On RT, I suppose, we are to believe you can say anything. SF]

So, I had quite a bit of experience with media. What I found the difference with Russia Today is they don’t do pre-interviews. I’ve done pre-interviews with your people. I’ve done pre-interviews in the past when I appeared on other networks. [Maybe RT vets their interviewees somewhat earlier in the process. SF]

Just two days ago, [= Friday SF] I did a pre-interview with BBC. They were going to have me on air. But once they heard what I had to say, they came back and said, oh, no, we don’t need to use you now. So, I’m —

STELTER: I’m glad you’re here. I’m just concerned about the sourcing, the credibility here. You say it’s not a Kremlin propaganda network. We’ll put that to the side. It’s funded by Moscow. So, that’s why I say it that way.

Let’s put that to the side.

Do you think it’s appropriate for the Judge Andrew Napolitano to go on FOX and say this stuff based on this kind of third or fourth hand sourcing?

JOHNSON: I think judge should have had a different approach to it.

You know, what’s ironic is I was a FOX News analyst through 2002 to 2003. I never spoke to Judge Napolitano then and really had never spoken — I hadn’t spoken to him until he actually called me on Saturday.

So, you know, there’s I guess — I supposed a little bit of irony here. But the substance of what he’s saying — again, he didn’t get it right, accurate either. I’m not saying the British, GHCQ was wiretapping Trump’s Tower.

But let’s make a simple point. In “The New York Times”, two days ago, they noted that the very first agency to notify that the, quote, “DNC had been hacked was GHCQ.” The British version of the NSA. [That’s here. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/world/europe/trump-britain-obama-wiretap-gchq.html It appeared in print on Thursday. Was the reliable sources story taped Saturday? GCHQ was not the first to notice the hacking but the first identify the hackers as from Russia, that is as Fancy Bear, at least in one version of events. SF]

On March 1st, “The New York Times” reported that — said the Obama White House was scrambling to get information out about Trump’s contacts and they cited in that article information provided by Dutch and British intelligence.

Well, look, Brian, there’s only two types of British intelligence. You either got human intelligence from MI-6, which is passed to the CIA, or you have GHCQ information. So, it’s not like this is just coming out of nowhere.

But again, I make the point, I heard about it from sources who are within the intelligence community before Trump tweeted. And the issue was more — [Which tweet? Before the wiretapped tweets? That was based on a Mark Levin claim. Well, you know Mark Levin might have had some people trying to help him to get to that conclusion, too SF]

STELTER: I was Googling “The New York Times” story, that March 1st story, it was about Obama administration to preserve intelligence about the Russian election hacking. Let me just ask you one final thought here. I mean, given your experience in media, do you think there’s an issue for Napolitano that he needs to address? Because he hasn’t said anything about this, this weekend, about who his intel sources were in.

JOHNSON: Hey, I’ve gotten out of business of giving other people like him advice. You now, they don’t listen to me any way. So, I think — I think the judge is an honorable man. I think his heart was in the right place. [Very noble of him, as he cuts Napolitano’s throat. SF]

But, you know, if you could go back and do this all over, I would have gone back to President Trump when he first tweeted that out. He shouldn’t have used the word “wiretap”. But, clearly, I have seen, there’s an inform — I call it an information operation that’s been directed, I believe, directed against President Trump and people like John Brennan and Jim Clapper — [By “information operation” I think he means what most people call propaganda, and apparently he meant to say before he was interrupted that ex-Obama political appointees are behind it. SF]

STELTER: But you say that, you said you believe it, but like, honestly, Larry, my editor is about 30 feet over there in his office right now. If I went over to my editor and said here’s what I got. Larry says this, this is what he believes, I would not be allowed to use you as an anonymous source. You don’t have firsthand proof.

JOHNSON: Sure. And again, don’t take my word for it. I think when we start laying out the evidence of what’s been going on throughout the campaign.

Just a very simple example, when Jim Clapper came out and implied 16 intelligence agencies plus his office agreed there was Russian meddling, you knew right away that that was nonsense because there was not a written document that had been circulated in the community.

[11:25:16] That’s the only way you get the community approval. And yet, when they put out the report in early January, only three agencies. Three, the NSA, the FBI and the CIA coordinated on that. They left out the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

So, when I start seeing games like that being played by people who are charge of our intelligence services, that tells me they’re not doing a professional job. They are playing politics with it. And that concerns me.

1) I think Johnson just simmply made a mistake as to when the article he cites appeared in the New York Times. It was not two days before Sunday, but three days before since I don’t think the BBC would have been interested in talking to him on Thursday, but maybe I am wrong.

2) I am not at all clear what he claims British intelligence and Clapper and Brennan were doing. Leaking to the press? Is that what he means by “passing information back channel?”

3) Larry C. Johnson does not name this discussion board where he says he first posted his “information.” Is it closed? What actually did he say? Can anyone check?

4) He also says he was interviewed on RT the day after Trump’s first tweet about being “wiretapped” but it is not clear what he said then. The same thing? Something different?

Davod, Newt, on FOX News this morming, also took note of Comey’s peculiarly partisan inability to comment on issues which involve Democrat perfidy, while demonstrating no such reluctance toward transparently manufactured allegations of misbehavior leveled at the Trump campaign.

But putting a filmmaker and paying ads that espoused blasphemy as a motive was ok then, sammeh,

The CIA has always
claimed, believe it or not, that they never said it was caused by a video, and maybe they were careful not to go on record anywhere with that, even in secret communications and documents.

The CIA only said it was inspired by the events in Cairo. So if they didn’t say the nonexistent demonstration was about a movie trailor for a movie that was never made, then they think they’re excused.

As for what inspired the evens in Cairo, I think that the CIA claimed, before September 11, 2012, that the upcoming demonstration in Cairo would be about the video, but if so that is all still secret. There are a few hints. But whatever the cable to the Cauro embassy said, it is still highly classified.

Certainly there was something that caused the infamous tweet from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo apologizing for the video. A tweet that they didn’t take down till quite late in the day and only after encountering criticism from various people including presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

People get confused because the demonstrations that took place all ovewr the Arab or Moslem wor;ld as far east as Pakistan after the attack in Benghazi were ostensibly about the video and the United States even ran ads in Pakistan apologizing (or disclaiming responsibility) . for the video – that is apologizing for freedom of religion here.

But the one in Cairo probably actually focused on a demand for freedom for Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, who died in prison recently, and not the video, in spite of the tweets from the U.S. Cairo embassy in Cairo beforehand, trying to had it off by denying any responsibility for the video.

The one in Benghazi was a surprise, but the attackers put guards around scene of the first attack, the so-called U.S. Mission in Benghazi, and then spread rumors that a peaceful demonstration had been fired upon, and when they got a crowd to come there, they harrangued the crowd, which included a stringer for the New York Times) about the video. That was the first anybody in benghazi not part of the attack heard about the video. Certainly that the first time the New York Times stringer heard about it. But note: blaming the video originated with the actual attackers themselves and did not originate in the White House. Of course no way was this organized in a few hours. The terrorists were resonsible both for the attack and for the video.

Of course the terrorists themselves were responsible for the video. Is there any other possibility? They had been responsible for both the making and the uploading of the video. And the Obama Administration, at the instigation of the CIA, bought this cover story that that inspired the attack, hook, line and sinker. That story did not fool anybody except those inside the White House. It wss not intended to fool anyone else because it was never supposed to circulate outside the White House, being, as it was, largely based on SOOPER SEKRIT INTELLIGENCE. But this was such favorable news to them that they publicized it.

The video story was actually just one of a variety of cover stories the terrorist sponsors devised to explain why the attack took place (another one being because it happened on Sep 11 and terrorists supposedly like anniversaries, and another one that it was retaliation for the killing of al-Libi) and it probably surprised them that it was having such success.

It was so successful, that Ansar al Sharia (which was not really responsible – key point: If they did it, that wold mean a purely locally based organization did the whole thing) retracting its claim of responsibility on Facebook.

He’s being interviewed by someone with a British accent who calls hima former CIA agenta nd State Department official and he speaks very slowly.

With good reason, maybe since he’s actually saying things taht are wrong.

He first stresses that the wrord wiretap is wrong, and opines that Obama make a tricky Clinton style denial. But the word Obama used was “surveillance. So he loses that point.

He also agrees that Trump has evidence (which has not materialized) He says Trump does have evidence but says he shouldn’t have announced this through Twitter. He doesn’t think Trump is doing this without evidence.

He says there were people who had “attempted” to overhear Trump’s conversations with his aides, but the people who he says did that were in U.S. intelligence and the FBI. He does not mention GCHQ in
this context.

He mentions GCHQ but not the idea that they spied on Trump Tower or even in the United States. (If he means that he doesn’t say that) He says the word “overseas,” so the implication would be any coonversations eavesdropped on took place in Europe. He says GCHQ passed on information to Clapper and Brennan, who in turn spread it around the United States government.

He doesn’t say where and how GCHQ got whatever information they had. He might even be confusing it with the dossier that Christopher Steele came up with, but Steele once had worked for MI6 and would most likely have given it to them, if anyone, so I don’t know why he says GCHQ.

Maybe he means some other interception of telephone conversations or data. But he doesn’t say what.

He says “friends” had told him that Clapper and Brennan were trying to derail Trump’s campaign. He says Admiral Rogers of the NSA went to see Trump shortly after the election – to protect himself from an accusation that the NSA was misused with respect to Donald Trump, and then Clapper and Brennan tried to get him fired.

While he’s quick to accuse western intelligence of trying to affect the election (I think) he wants to defend Russia against the idea they “meddled” in the election. He says Russia didn’t set up any front company, and didn’t send any money to the Trump campaign to pay for ads, and didn’t pass on advice, and that’s the classic way how you interfere with elections. Sure they spied, but the U.S. also spied and that’s something totally different.

He says the Obama remnants did not expect Trump to win and after the election they tried to prevent him from taking office by planting information in the press. You can call it sedition. He says Obama gave the green light to start distributing material taht came from GCHQ. I think he may be really talking about the dossier.

DRJ on Let’s Not Forget About McCabe’s Conflict Of Interest Based On His Wife

Colonel Haiku on Trump Twitter Accusation Against Comey Creates Non-Existent Quote Out of Thin Air

happyfeet on Trump Twitter Accusation Against Comey Creates Non-Existent Quote Out of Thin Air

narciso on Trump Twitter Accusation Against Comey Creates Non-Existent Quote Out of Thin Air

BuDuh on Trump Twitter Accusation Against Comey Creates Non-Existent Quote Out of Thin Air

happyfeet on Trump Twitter Accusation Against Comey Creates Non-Existent Quote Out of Thin Air

Colonel Haiku on Trump Twitter Accusation Against Comey Creates Non-Existent Quote Out of Thin Air

Rev.Hoagie on Let’s Not Forget About McCabe’s Conflict Of Interest Based On His Wife

Colonel Haiku on Trump Twitter Accusation Against Comey Creates Non-Existent Quote Out of Thin Air

narciso on Trump Twitter Accusation Against Comey Creates Non-Existent Quote Out of Thin Air

SEARCH AMAZON USING THIS SEARCH BOX:
Purchases made through this search function benefit this site, at no extra cost to you.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.